yo-yo #11: the best looking freehand zero ever

i know i just posted the higby dinosaur zero two posts ago. and i will admit that this yo-yo and that may well be forever deadlocked in a struggle for fhz aesthetic supremacy. still though, i like lavender (i'm masculine that way; my son's room is lavender). so i'ma give this one the edge.

i got this yo-yo from steve matchett (aka mr. match) in 2006. i haven't seen him around on the boards lately, but in a relatively short time, he put out a number of ridiculously amazing dye-jobs, both on polycarb plastic and delrin/celcon. this is my favorite marble-dye ever. i'm not sure what i gave him for this... (i think maybe a white worlds 05 mosquito?) but it was a good deal for me.

the yo-yo itself is just an ordinary white fhz. at some point i sent it to chris hicks to be silicone recessed. it plays like any silicone recessed fhz; wonderfully.

the dye on it is so intricate and fascinating that it feels like a story told in a language i don't understand. i seriously feel that if i had some sort of syllibary, i could "read" and "interpret" this yo-yo. if i was any kind of photographer, i could capture it, but i'm not and i can't. parts of it are kind of a textured "amythest" and others are veined marble. i have no idea how he masked it. i see something new in it every time i pick it up, and it changes hue completely depending on the light. i think the original white caps [on ANY fhz, actually] work perfectly to set off the color and just give it the most classic look ever. whoever designed the fhz caps seriously deserves a double-finger-snap-wink.

this is one of those yo-yo's that i'm nervous about taking outside, and yet i can't resist playing it. at one point, right after receiving it, i took it to linville gorge in the beautiful nc mountains, and i dropped it in the surging pool below the falls (by accident). i recovered it, and consider that a sort of baptism. actually, i'm just glad i didn't ding it.

yo-yo #10: clean machine

plain. simple. unadorned. what do you need to yo-yo? what do you need to be a yo-yoer?

i'm not sure of the exact day that it became the future, but it surely did. you're reading this online. in all likelihood, the majority of your personal communications today have been online. as such, it's so easy to slouch into the belief that yo-yoing is something that happens on a network, in a forum, on a keyboard. and through the inescapable lenses of commerce, it's even easier to lounge into the thought that, like everything else we want, yo-yoing is something that we can acquire; and that if we fail or cease in our quest to acquire (the newest, shiniest, smoothest), then our yo-yoing is diminished.

fortuately, yo-yoing is not something that you acquire. it's something that you are, or may become. there is no connection between what you have and what you are.

this is not a fancy yo-yo. it does not have a spec bearing (or... any bearing, for that matter). it isn't made of 6061. there are no hubstacks, no silicone recess, no sonic-welded rim weights. there is nothing here to hide behind. when you throw it down (and sometimes when you just look at it), your every flaw is exposed.

the hard thing isn't working to become so amazing that you have no more flaws. rather, it's realizing that we are made of flaws. we CONSIST of our flaws; of our illusions. when you snap back on trapeze or run out of spin, though you may scream at yourself inwardly, this yo-yo will not berate you. it will guard the door, but it's never cruel. any weakling can forge themselves into an ideal. but, ideals are always on the move, and said weaklings will move with them; never satisfied. our society tells us that "never satisfied" is the most productive way to live, but yo-yoing doesn't have to be about "producing" something. it can be about appreciating what's already there; what's always been there, from our first weak throw. that's the hard part, and when you can really do that, the "flaws" you once thought were there aren't flaws at all.

so why practice yo-yoing? why practice anything? because practice does not make perfect. practice IS perfect. the paradox is that we have to move through practice to recognize that perfection has been there all the time. and after we realize that? more practice. (it's a good thing yo-yoing is fun.)

your yo-yoing inevitably expresses what you're seeking. are you seeking a huge collection? are you seeking titles and accolades? are you seeking a reputation for witty banter or incredible skill? would you still care about incredible skill if you couldn't get online for a year? what matters to you?

if i could manifest the truth while sitting still; if it felt right, then that's what i'd do. sometimes it does. other times, i pick up this yo-yo, and i play it, and the fanciful microcosm that i've constructed and maintained for myself falls away. i pick up this yo-yo and that which i need comes into glaring relief. it occurs to me that every activity, every trick i hide behind is only a shadow of the truth. the only point of yo-yoing is to experience life; to do so intensely and sincerely, and to share yourself with everything.

i don't want you to join a cult or drink any kool-aid (though, now i'm thirsty... great). but quit groping. quit attaching to the idea that yo-yoing is something that happens outside and away from yourself, whatever you play. if you've been reading, you know that i have modern yo-yo's with every possible accoutrement. if i picked up an 888 and understood, then that would be enough. sometimes, though, it's easier to understand everything when you strip everything away.

this is the clean machine. it's the first and the last; the simplest and the most impossibly difficult yo-yo to use and understand.

yo-yo #'s 8 and 9: john higby + dinosaurs

john higby dinosaur yo-yo's



i don't have a lot of stories associated with these two yo-yo's, but they speak for themselves.
and they basically say: "john higby is a titan."
in addition to being a ridiculously talented performer, he's a seriously kind and giving gentleman, and has been very good to me.


i sent him a big ben around 2005, and asked him to give me a triceratops skateboarding. he killed it. i don't love big ben's like he does, but i had ordered a clear one for my yo-yo class to use for learning string tricks. when i came to realize that they would need easier, more consistent response, i swapped it for a 201 from my own collection, and sent the big ben off to get arted up. although it's just an ordinary (albeit beautiful) big ben, it suicides better than any yo-yo i have ever owned. i clocked my longest one (while standing still - running suicides are another matter!) at 1.25 seconds.

recently, i sent him some caps and asked for more dinosaurs. though i had originally intended to put these on an mg, i decided against it because i know how fickle i am. once you put caps on an mg, the ONLY way to pry them off is by drilling a hole into em (btw, if you drill the hole PRIOR to snapping the caps in, the yo-yo whistles like a shrieking satelite!) so, i decided to just put ordinary mg caps on my mg, and toss these on a zero i had just procured. said zero is one of the takeshi painted/siliconed ones. it's sort of cream with some yellowish fade. higby's caps are super striking on it, and i like that the yo-yo is kind of an unintentional collaboration between two good friends and great people. i think it looks the boss. i haven't had it long enough to develop a cool story for it, but i assure you, i'll get right on that.


thanks forever, john. you're an artist, and a cool guy, and you deserve all of the awesome things that are happening to you. ;)

yo-yo #7: bedazzled cfgt

what is it with yo-yo players and ukuleles?

there's me, drew tetz, steve brown, josh root... who else... it seems like everybody plays ukulele.

at one point in 2005, josh root posted a b/s/t thread about procuring interesting stringed instruments in exchange for yo-yo's. josh is 1/2 of the crime-fighting duo, the diss kings (the other half being jack ringca), which is sort of a "team" that exists solely to mock the considerable inanity of the yo-yo world. josh is a good yo-yo player, but his claim to fame is probably his powder coating, which for awhile in 2005 was "all the rage". everyone and their mom was getting their bare aluminum difs and phis coated in technicolor-sparkly-rainbow hues, and josh was making about $40 a pop.

i offered him the two instruments i had available: a hilo baritone ukulele that i had drawn all over, and a bizarre old balalaika-looking instrument called a strumstick which played like a dulcimer, but sounded like a banjo. he offered me his services on my phi, which i had long wanted "ectoplasm green", as well as a cold fusion gt in any color i wanted. i chose red, and he made it so red, it became the basis for my definition of the color. i later ditched the phi, which always kind of played like balls. evidently, the uke played like balls, too, because josh traded it to steve brown, and now i think it sits over his bass rack.

this yo-yo is remarkable in that i've never "pimped out" another to the same degree. xzibit would be proud. what once was a cold fusion gt is now... a glossy red powdercoated, large konkave spr'd, black hubstacked cold fusion gt. it's pretty crazy, but even crazier is the fact that i never really dug it all that much. i traded it at one point for an mg (though i later traded back for it). i probably offered it to 10 different people who never wanted it (though it plays as well as anything).

i didn't actually learn to love it until this summer. i was hired by a local filmaker as a "yo-yo stunt double" for a short film about a toy store owner on a secret quest to develop a yo-yo that never stops spinning. i drove over to wilmington in mid-june to shoot, and was greeted by 100+ degree temperatures. the issue was compounded by the fact that they were shooting in the top story of an old warehouse, which was humid as the day is long. i heard one of the grips say that it got up to 130 inside. since i have some tattoos on my hand/wrist (and to make me look old and weathered like the actor i was doubling) i had to do about an hour of makeup, which was melting against my sweat even as it was applied.

once i looked the part, the director asked if i had a red yo-yo. although i had brought my big case, and probably 60+ yo-yo's, the only red one i had was the pimped cfgt. interestingly enough, the yo-yo they had been using in all of the shots was a red-dyed turbo bumblebee gt without the caps (essentially a plastic version of this yo-yo). that thing was trashed, and had no guts or response, so i was glad to have an alternative. we shot for about 5 hours in increasing heat and humidity, and although the 1st hour left my hands stringburned and bloody (with no trace of the carefully applied makeup remaining), i actually came to appreciate the yo-yo, itself. string notwithstanding, it really held up and played great, and since then i've enjoyed it, though it's just too pretty to seriously beat on.

eventually, i got a copy of that film on dvd. it's cute and a little cheesy, and the old guy who plays the owner looks absolutely nothing like me. you really have to suspend your disbelief when they cut to me yo-yoing in the workshop. they didn't pick my "best yo-yoing" (SURE, they didn't), but they picked stuff that "worked". it's a good little flick, and a real good little yo-yo.

i have no idea whether or where the film is available. i have it on my computer, but i'd feel bad sharing it.
you can see the yo-yo part here: http://www.vimeo.com/1817814
password: spun

yo-yo #6: blue renegade

in 2002, i was teaching 6th grade at a mediocre charter school in downtown durham. stacy and i had moved to carrboro the year before (to accommodate her unc med-school choice), and i was commuting about 35 minutes into the city. the situation was not improved by the fact that i was working for a pittance and teaching every subject.

i had totally abandoned any kind of progressive yo-yoing (in truth i hadn't found it yet, though i thought i had). the only yo-yo out of cold-storage at the time was my custom mag predator (more on that later), and it banged around with spent staples and dirt-change in my teacher-desk. on a time, one of my students brought in an old yomega brain and spent recess trying to find his way through "forward pass" (though he called it "shoot the moon"). in the waning seconds of our time outside, i asked him to let me see it.

i've never actually been all that good at yo-yoing, and at this time, having fully picked the scab of the late 90's fad and discarded it (but for moments when i simply refused to grade things and searched out something else to do), the rust of years was evident. i fumbled to make a slip-knot (travis hadn't bothered or didn't know how), took two tries to "wind the dog", and missed several split-bottom mounts before nailing "split-the-atom" (which i knew as "atom bomb", having never heard the more politically correct "atom smasher"). i wandered through a theme and variations on "chain reaction" before the bell rang, and i handed the toy back to its owner.

the funny thing about yo-yo's is that you can be really bad, and even throw really badly by your own really bad standards... and people will still be absolutely amazed. during my self-indulgent yo-yo diatribe, i had not really noticed that the class had encircled me. only after i returned the yo-yo and asked them to line up did i notice that their starry-eyed slack-jawed stares. the were agog. they were astonished. they had been taught all year by a mutant yo-yo superstar from uranus, and they hadn't had any idea (well, about the yo-yo part). again, i was decidedly "not good", but to the uninitiated, even the banal and routine appear to transcend the limits of reality.

one girl, who had the befuddling name of "awnshawntia" (or as she explained on day 1, "it's pronounced enchanté. it's french.") actually asked me if it was magic. "do more magic tricks," she said. i had seen "ok" yo-yoing, and i was aware of my own mediocrity, but everyone feels bolstered by such praise. i pulled my mag out of my desk and frowned at it, having forgotten that my last bee-string had snapped, sending the metal toy dinging across the floor of the empty classroom on one empty morning. it stared up at me impotently, and i was consumed by the desire to find a new string.

that afternoon, between the bell and my first parent-teacher conference at 4:00, i went to the only toy store in town (a tiny, indy place next door to duke). i asked if they had any yo-yo string, and was met with a quizzical look from the proprietor. "no," she said, "but we have yo-yo's. do they MAKE just the string?" she led me to an aisle in the back, where i learned that, in point of fact, they had "yo-yo". singular. one yo-yo: a blue superyo renegade. in my blissful ignorance of the yo-yo world, i had never heard of it. i had never seen the sector y videos. the name of "escolar" was, as yet, meaningless to me. i was confused as to why this random offering was the only one in the store. the last time i had actively looked for aything yo-yo related was probably y2k, and in any given toy store, one was positively assailed by yo-yo's. it occurred to me that the fad had died, just as skateboarding had in the early-90's (i still remember trying to find a pair of vans, airwalks, or ANY skate shoes in 1997 to no avail). i didn't even blink before buying the renegade (which came with TWO strings - one for the mag, one for the gade - i'd be set for life!)

the yo-yo was royal blue and slightly translucent. at the time, i wasn't a big fan of butterfly shapes, because i had trouble looping them (my weak inside loops represented roughly 1/10 of my trick potential). i flipped it imperial, but hated it, and pagoda was just a crazy novelty, so i stuck with butterfly. it was super-responsive out of the box, which i loved. i could do exceedingly long combos on it (by my standards) and still have the snap to get it back to the hand. i went to one of the few yo-yo sites i knew of (yomania.com, god help me) and was pleased to find tons of glowing reviews. still, i remained fully ignorant of its uncanny potential.

i probably threw that yo-yo for 2 straight months. i made up tricks that i have since forgotten. i forgave its butterfly shape when i learned it enabled me to hit trapeze pretty much automatically. and then, inexplicably, i put it down; put it away. i didn't touch it again for 2 years. i blame this on three circumstances. 1.) i was still not the type to research my interests carefully on the internet. 2.) i was, at the time, totally obsessed with learning to surf. one obsession at a time, please. and 3.) i knew of zero yo-yo players within a 100-mile radius. as the boom had dried up, so the yo-yo population appeared to have evaporated. yo-yoing no longer felt like a "movement", so much as a "relic". it was amazing, but you can only be amazing in a vacuum for so long before people (and you, yourself) tire of your "same old crap".

if i had happened upon the boards; the culture that WAS out there, i would have found freehand. i would have found offstring. i would have realized how wonderfully FAR from the core of understanding i actually was, and i would have desired to keep searching. but, when you're alone in the world, it's difficult to question your own understanding. with yo-yoing, it never occurred to me that there was even something to understand. i never realized how far it extended.

so, when i hold this renegade, i think of the years i spent in yo-yo solitude; unaware of what could be done with it. had i ever seen what paul escolar, gabriel lozano, or spencer berry had done with it, i would have seen yo-yoing in the way awnshawntia had: as magic.

it reminds me that while i regret my ignorance, i recognize that it was (and remains, thank god) a substantial part of me.

i still play with this all the time. i feel as though do not truly know a trick unless i can do it on this yo-yo. the starbursts gave their last gasp years ago, and after trying a duncan sticker in it in 2004 (way too responsive on such a thin bearing), it was the first yo-yo i tried recessing on a dremel. it was the gnarliest, nastiest recess-job ever. it looked as though i had spun the yo-yo at 33 rpm and stabbed it repeatedly with a pit bull's tooth. in 2006, i had chris hicks clean it up for me with a thick dif pad, and it now resides comfortably in the realm between responsive and unresponsive.

the paul escolar sector-y vids remain my most transformative moment in yo-yoing; as if coming out of a tunnel and into a sunrise, and wondering where the color orange had been during all those dark years. the fact that that dude could use the same yo-yo as the one i gave up on to invent what he did still blows me away. in the last 4 years, i'm pretty sure that every time i've picked up this yo-yo, i've done one of his tricks first, as a sort of libation.

this is one of the few yo-yo's that, should i make it to 90, i know i will hold with the same reverence.

yo-yo #5: the purple rebellion-quashing fireball

goddamn, some people.

ah... the boom. i remember it fondly. especially since i was not personally invested in yo-yoing at all, and just one among millions of spineless hookworms to latch on to the fad with both mouthparts as it rocketed through the late 90's. i bought this yo-yo in the summer before my junior year at boston college. i was a ymca day camp counselor, and EVERY kid at camp had a yo-yo (fireballs were standard-issue. if you had a stinger, you were cool. if you had a team losi, you were sort of edgy. if you had a raider, you were a legend, and automatically beloved. if you had a duncan, someone might try to give you an old pair of shoes, cause they assumed you were poor as hell).

there were hundreds of plastic yo-yo's being lost at camp, and i could have ganked any of them through nefarious counselor-means, but i thought it might look bad to get called on that. plus most campers were bright enough to scratch their initials on the inside wall like a cowboy might with his saddle. the heavy-handed went through 5-packs of yomega string like lightning, as their sloppy, jagged carving would burn through type 8 cotton in a trice.


so, i bought one at zany brainy. i paid $14.95. it was easily the most i had ever considered paying for a yo-yo. (although i had been gifted with a brain (laugh all you want) in 1987 by my dad following a trip to fall river, mass., i had traded that yo-yo almost immediately for a duncan midnight special with shiny silver stars.) i chose purple, not because it was most fetching (green was), but because no camp kids had purple. like little north carolinian bloods and crips, they stuck to red and blue, and the unproveable rumor that reds spun longer, but blues looped better was widely bandied about the park.

some of the kids (and all of the counselors) found it ridiculous and juvenile for me to participate in the trend, but i didn't care. yo-yoing was fun, portable, and it really didn't matter how good you were. it was like an instant-tribe. if you were yo-yoing around town, you WOULD see another yo-yoer. they might be anywhere between the ages of 6 and 30, but it didn't matter. those days were replete with knowing glances and nods; as though we were all caretakers of a secret that just happened to be everywhere.

anyway, summer ended, i went back to boston, and still yo-yoed all the time. i probably knew 20 tricks, none of which had been learned online. i also had a purple brain to match my fireball, but i thought clutches were lame, so it was "disabled". the fireball was in my black silent-bob trenchcoat pocket virtually the whole year. at the end of it, i was VERY good... at all 20 of the aforementioned tricks.

my best, most indelible memory of it is during a history study group session. everyone had to take history to fulfill their core. it had nothing to do with my dual majors of elementary ed. and music composition, so i didn't care about it in the least. i went to lectures sometimes, and mainly drew cartoons or read comics (it was during this semester that i fell in love with stan sakai's usagi yojimbo). during "study group" (and i use the term loosely), i would either work on austere, semi-tonal compositions that i silently dreamt would someday be masterpieces... or i'd yo-yo (i was THAT obnoxious).

anyway, on this day we were discussing the warsaw jewish rebellion against the germans of 1943, but really, the only word that pertains to this story is "rebellion". it could have been any rebellion, because the most annoying, wanted-to-make-sweet-whoopee-with-his-own-voice idiot in the section (maybe in any section - ever) LOVED to say the word "rebellion". only, he pronounced it "webellion". his name was fred, although i'm just assuming there because when he referred to himself (and he did so often), it was as "fwed". he had previously picked a fight with my friend hilary "the guy" taylor, but he had conveniently transformed into "cuddly-drunk" before it had actually come to blows.

anyway, we came to some question and fwed started pontificating about how it would have been in the germans' interests to have "squashed" the rebellion quickly and quietly so as to prevent other uprisings. i found his diction (here having the meaning of "word-choice") hilarious, as well as his diction (here having the meaning of pronunciation). i was pretty sure every other person in that group had heard the phrase "to quash rebellion", and there were a few raised eyebrows when he said "squash" again. i was irritated (probably just because i didn't like fwed), so i said something like "well, i'm sure they intended to QUASH it quietly. i'm sure they would have preferred history students not be reading about it 50 years later." his rebuttal was immediate: "but they DIDN'T squash it, ed. the webellion wasn't squashed at all, because the jews achieved their obective and died fweely!"

at this point i took out my fireball and started doing some inside loops.

fwed continued. "and that's the thing about webellions, people. they have to be squashed. if they aren't squashed, the wegime's pwoblems will multipwy."

i looped faster.

"i think we should bwing this up with the big cwass. it wepwesents an important point. the germans' failure to squash-"

my string snapped. the yo-yo sailed across the room, landing with a thud on a desk before rocketing back toward me due to the backspin. i ignored it.

"QUASH!" i yelled. "the word is QUASH, fwed! "squash" is a vegetable, or something done to mushrooms in mario. "quash" is what happens to rebellions. you're killing me over here."

"sewiouswy? that's a word? i always heard 'squashed'."

i was so irritated. i remember walking home while doing variations of rock the baby and a trick i called "unhook the stars", which was a terrible movie but remains a great trick name. i pulled out weathered oxford dictionary and looked up the word "squash".

i found something approximating this:

1. To beat, squeeze, or press into a pulp or a flattened mass; crush. See Synonyms at crush.

2. To put down or suppress; quash: squash a revolt.

i am a dumbass. i never apologized. goddamn that fwed anyway.

yo-yo #'s 3 and 4: eric wolff wooden yo-yo's

pull up a chair, ladies, and let me spin you a yarn about a dick move i pulled...

nc states 2008. i was running it, and we needed sponsors. since forever, i had ogled at eric wolff's wooden yo-yo's and it occurred to me to contact him and see if he had anything he could contribute. to my bewilderment, he responded promptly and said he'd do two for me: one for me to keep, and another for the contest! i was pretty taken aback at this. i mean, really... if i had the ability to make these yo-yo's myself, i'd probably make 20. i'd put 10 in a steel box and bury it in my yard, put one in some sort of rotating display case in my house (with lasers), and play the crap out of the other 9. and that would be all.

and here he was giving me (i mean the contest) TWO.

they came a few weeks later: one cocobolo freehand zero with a large kk setup and one smaller, lighter, speeder-shaped small merc-bearing yo-yo made from indian rosewood. they killed. killed killed killed. and it was rough knowing that the zero (the more beautiful of the pair) wasn't mine. eric had stipulated that it go to the contest, but didn't care where.

the weeks leading up to the event advanced, and suddenly, we were alive with sponsors. yyn, yyf, yyj, yyg, and clyw had all come through and gone big. we got 3 nice metals from yyf (plus all the plastics), a PAIR of peaks from chris at clyw, and the usuals from the nation, the guy, and the jam. all this for top 5 finishers in 2 divisions and what turned out to be about 25 competitors. there had been a snafu with duncan, but they had still donated all of our give-to-newcomers yo-yos. we were in such good shape, deciding what would go where became a seious ordeal. the peaks were reselling for a ton and played like butter, so they went to the top spots in 1a and open. there were still like 6 $80 yo-yo's to distribute. so i did the unthinkable. i kept the metal in the freestyles, put the eric wolff up as the top prize for ladder... and then i entered. i kind of justified it by saying it would encourage people to sign up for ladder, but of course like 4 did... and they were mostly my pals. i wasn't going to freestyle, cause i wanted to help judge. it was just... shady.

the thing about sport ladder is that its all about being consistent with just a few tricks. i've always done well with it, because i like all those tricks (except effing boingy - and don't even start. i've heard from everyone. jesus could come down from heaven and give me boing instructions and jiggle my wrist up and down and give me clever analogies and my boings would still blow. i could meet satan at the crossroads and trade my soul for perfect boings and blues guitar skill, and i'd go home and play great guitar, but when i tried boings be all "goddamn it, satan, these are just as bad as before!" i can do it well enough to get through it on ladder, but i won't be learning "protrusion" anytime soon, and i've accepted that. ringca likens them to a $2.00 hooker; "not pretty, but they get the job done").

so i won... and i felt like a big hairless [boingless] turd. i felt as though, being the contest organizer, i shouldn't have competed at all. i felt like, by winning, i had betrayed eric; as though no one should be able to own two of his yo-yo's. i felt like i cheated my pals... and yet... i wasn't prepared to give it up, because to whom could i fairly give it. i felt like i'd be a good enough caretaker, but it's never really felt "mine". i've maybe played it a dozen times. it has the original string on it. i've never unscrewed it. it kind of stares at me like the big glazed eye in the tell tale heart. no phantom beats yet, and no one under the floorboards... leastways no one relevant to this issue.

hopefully someday, i'll come to terms with having it, and give it its due attention. lord knows, i'm not ready to pass it on, or brandon jackson would have had it long ago. the other one, i've played lots. it's a little light, but well-balanced and gorgeous. yo-yo art.

oh well. not a crime against humanity, per se. i didn't make sweet love to anyone's decrepit mom, but this was not my shiniest moment, either. i expect that when my days are spent and they put me on a shelf, if it turns out to be the worst i did, i'd be surprised... and pretty pleased.

it's almost certainly the most beautiful yo-yo in my collection, and in an unfortunate coincidence, it remains the only yo-yo that i sincerely feel bad for owning...

... so why am i smiling?

yo-yo #2: sayco tournament yo-yo

sayco tournament yo-yo

in july of this year, i dragged the wife and kids up north to visit family in new england. ok, so they went willingly, but the 32 hours in the car felt distinctly like "dragging". i've gone up there almost every year since i was an infant, and the scene at my aunt lorraine's house in manville, ri is always raucous, hilarious, and warm.

their house (purchased some years ago from my maternal grandparents) is old, and the side street to it is more cracked and weathered than walter matthau's face. my mom used to tell stories of how she fell down on it and jammed a loose piece of black asphalt into her knee, which lodged there eternally. she carries a piece of old river road with her everywhere, still. i guess so do i, but i don't have the pebble.

aunt lorraine is married to uncle tom, an art teacher. their son, jack and i are of similar age, and whatever distance lies between us, i will always count him among my most trusted friends. uncle tom is another matter. when i was in middle school, jack and i used to go 2-on-2 in any sport against any pairing of uncles. neither of us will forget the drubbing we received at the hands of my father, "big ed", and our monolithic uncle john bryer when we challenged them to the dumbest, manliest game ever, 2-on-2 football. i think we lost 49-0. we met with much greater success against my dad and his dad in 2-a-side baseball (no less idiotic, really). as we ran up the score against them, uncle tom's anger became palpable. i did not help matters when i started talking serious trash or 'calling my shots', and by the end, he and i were embroiled in a full on scream-off. we both later apologized (kind of), but i still think about that day every time i go up there. it's funny, the little things we hang on to.

anyway, fast forward to july 2008. everyone in the family knows i yo-yo, probably because i'm effing obnoxious about doing it all over the place. uncle tom, being no exception, approached me and asked if i was interested in meeting an old-time yo-yoer. as someone who's kind of into where yo-yoing comes from (see: yo-yo #1), i wondered who he meant. he shocked me by saying "his name's larry sayco". i had read a little about him via some web research at some point, and had heard more from people who had never met him, but knew of his legend.

larry sayco was an old duncan demonstrator in the 50's, and later broke away to form his own company. he used to sell his yo-yo's far and wide, but stopped suddenly when people began to take advantage of his generously low prices to mark them up in sales and auctions. now he only sells his wares at shows and functions, and has zero contact with what we'll term "the yo-yo community". (it was through an annual show at my uncle's school that they had become acquainted.)

although i had seen footage of him doing 2-handed loops while standing on top of a moving car, and had heard of his prolific skill as a performer, i was in no way prepared for our meeting. when we pulled up at his workshop (a non-descript, 400-square-foot brick oven in what appeared to be a non-descript, 800-square-foot town), rain was falling in torrents. my uncle and i (along with my two young cousins; the sons of the aforementioned "monolithic" john bryer) knocked and entered, and i was amazed to find that mr. sayco stood about 5'2. he honestly seemed bigger in the pictures on my computer than in real life. he was extremely cordial, and asked "so who's the champ?" evidently, my uncle had prevarocated regarding my skill, and i came up empty when i tried to imagine him bragging about me to anyone.


his workshop was totally cluttered by knick-knacks and papers (but few yo-yo's). his walls were plastered with news-clippings of his old performances. every photograph featured a grinning man with shining eyes, a pork pie hat, and knickers doing some extra-cheesy picture tricks, most of which i had never heard of ("tonto's mask"?). the few yo-yo's that could be seen were of old-school plastic ilk. ultra-thin and devoid of any label, they looked like duncan "professionals" with opaque sidecaps. the majority of the space itself was taken up by several large, ancient industrial machines, and as we "toured the facility', mr. sayco described the function of each.

all of the machines had been gingerly tinkered with. he was most proud of the string-twisting machine that he had constructed from spare parts. he claimed to have designed one for duncan before leaving the company, but was embittered over not being able to take it with him. we saw the immense machine where the molds for the different sayco yo-yo pieces (of which there are two) were pressed together. mr. sayco patted that machine like a trusty steed, saying "and this one cost me a mint... a MINT!" he also had a special press that fit the finished pieces together efficiently and tightly. he built a yo-yo for us from scratch, and quickly wound it a type 9 string.

then he started playing with it.

this dude looks about 90. he's seriously old, and waddles around like some leprous piece of him is about to break off and get lost on the floor amidst the detritus of 40 years of yo-yo making. but, dude can THROW. nothing even remotely new-school. lots of next-gen players would watch him and only vaguely recognize it as yo-yoing. there was no distinguishing between looping and string tricks. everything was interwoven. his loops were pristine, and he knocked a penny off my cousin's ear ("'cause quarters are cheating!"). he drilled bank deposit into his pants pocket 3 straight times, then punch-regenned into my cousin's pocket. it was like what i imagine kareem abdul-jabbar would be like as a centenarian. he could be ancient, withered, and wheelchair-bound on the street, but put him on the hardcourt and he'd not only walk, but redefine grace.

he asked to see my yo-yo (a luchador), and said he "yeah, i invented that". when i looked incredulous (having helped test the first prototypes), he explained that he meant he was part of a group of guys who came up with the idea for the butterfly-shaped yo-yo, not the luchador, specifically. although he dropped a few names, he explained that he was thoroughly independent from "yo-yoing". he just wasn't interested in being connected to other yo-yoers anymore. it was a fun job, but a job. he was attached neither to the glory days, nor to the fact that the yo-yo world had left him behind decades ago. he had left us there, too.

part of me wanted to say "you would blow peoples' minds! let me get you on youtube!" but thinking about it, i realized that he was so far beyond the need to show his skill off to others, the idea wouldn't be worth a thought. he had spent years winning contests, years on the road, years designing and building yo-yo's, years performing for kids bar mitzvahs. he had literally spent a lifetime in yo-yoing, and though he understood that "things had changed", he was also secure enough to understand that nothing important had. it's still playing with yo-yo's after all. the pettiness of my thought (and my yo-yoing) just seemd obscene in that moment.

as we walked out the door, he tossed me the yo-yo he had made. a scorched odor was still emanating from the axle. it was thin; half the width of many popular models today. like an awestruck teenager, i asked if he'd sign it, and he flashed to his workbench, where he used an electric dremel to engrave a quick signature onto the back cap. he tossed it back again and smiled meaningfully. "now, don't forget where it comes from," he said. i took 'it' to signify more than that particular yo-yo.

in the car on the way back, my cousins were aglow. it was clear that they'd been hooked on yo-yoing, and that, true to their own generation, they'd be on the internet researching it within an hour. my uncle and i exchanged no words that i recall, but i will never again associate him first with a rotten squabble over a childhood ballgame.


i still rock that yo-yo from time to time. it loops well. the gap is about the width of the cotton string on it, so string mounts have to be flawless. eli hops are seriously tough, and anything more modern is pointless. when i pick it up, i think of two things. i think of the gnome-like yo-yo hermit who generously gave it to me. and i remember that to be a yo-yoer, you don't have to find yourself caught up in yo-yo drama all the time, or ever. simply picking it up and throwing it with respect (and maybe a nod to all that have come before) is quite enough.

yo-yo #1: no jive

well... i guess i lied about there not being an order... this is undeniably my favorite yo-yo ever.
it's certainly the one most of my friends would first identify with me. in truth though, i didn't pick it because it's my favorite. i picked it because i already had so many pictures of it, and didn't feel like taking too many more. there are other no jives that are special to me, but it would feel a bit strange to start off with one of them. i call this one "#1" not as a reference to it's (or my) awesomeness, but because victor wooten calls the fodera 4-string bass he most often plays "#1".

i could seriously write a book about this yo-yo. i will grant you that it would not be a very good book.

the no jive 3-in-1 yo-yo was invented by "dr. yo", tom kuhn in 1976. i bought this particular yo-yo from dave's skill toys in arizona in 2005. i had recently gotten back into yo-yoing (hard), and was reading a lot of the yo-yo message boards. from time to time, these message boards become embroiled in various 'archetypical' debates (meaning there are only a few debates and we just have them again and again in different ways. it's sort of annoying, really.). one of the hottest at the time was the debate over response. a 'responsive' yo-yo will come back to the hand when tugged. an 'unresponsive' yo-yo will not and will need a string bind to return to the hand. generally speaking, playing with an unresponsive yo-yo is easier because it won't snap back and whack your hand in the middle of a trick, and that irritates a lot of the old guard because they had to learn it 'the hard way' before unresponsive yo-yo's rose to prominence.

anyway, i was reading these rehashed debates over response, and was really intrigued by what a lot of people [especially on the duncan crew (which then contained guys like steve brown, jack ringca, seth peterson, and spencer berry)] were saying. there perspective was generally that "unresponsive is fine, but if you learned the right way, you should be able to hit anything on a responsive yo-yo, too". i agreed with this, but couldn't really manifest it in my play. watching ringca's 'shut up' video featuring hard tricks on thin, responsive avengers and ballistics brought into relief my own inadequacy. also, growing up in the 80's, and witnessing the yo-yo boom of the 90's (during which ball-bearings became de rigeur), i always kind of viewed fixed axle yo-yo's as the real deal and transaxles as handy cheats. i no longer hold the same views, exactly, but when i think of "yo-yoing", i think of yo-yo's that "come back" first.


so in part to hone my skill (and probably in part, to escape from the fact that i wasn't improving quickly with bearings anyway), i bought this yo-yo from dave's for about $18 shipped. i probably spent my first month with it in total frustration because i was approaching it as i would a bearing yo-yo that just had way less spin time. i decided to dedicate my lent (though not a serious practicing catholic, i always liked the ritual of lent) to relinquishing bearings and just playing this one yo-yo. it was the best thing i ever did for my yo-yoing.

i abandoned my earlier view and looked at playing wood as a completely different endeavor. it was absolutely like starting over, and i had to re-examine my throw, and virtually all of the fundamentals i had taken for granted. i didn't get great in 40 days, but i stopped feeling embittered over it, and i recognized that which i still believe today; that yo-yoing is absolutely a spiritual deal.

no jives spin for about 20 seconds (my longest sleeper is 47, but i've never really practiced long sleepers... because they're really, really boring). compared with a bearing yo-yo, which can go on for minutes, that's pretty ephemeral. this appealed to me because it reminded me of life.

here's a haiku i wrote (i suck at haiku):

Life unwinds and spins
Then is pulled back to the hand
Inexorably

contrary to what i used to assume when i was young, we don't actually hang around on earth forever. my life may snag and i may get pulled back as i type this here. there aren't any guarantees and you pay for every misstep. this doesn't render life meaningless. rather, it ensures that nothing is trivial. the fundementals of your life MATTER. it's the same way with fixed axle yo-yo. you can take nothing for granted. the meaning is in the basics. in every breath. in every throw.

the yo-yo, itself, is just an everyday, run-of-the-mill 'tom kuhn no jive 3-in-1 yo-yo'. there is nothing special about it. i have beaten the crap out of it over the years, and it's pitted and blackened around the areas where it gets handled the most (i like that my dirt and sweat are literally part of it now). it vibrates a lot and has this "hum" that just kind of resonates with me. it doesn't bother me at all. this summer, i carved the impression of one of my tattoos into one side, and a very rough-textured "no jive" logo on the other. only a small part of me regrets it.


a lot of people ask me how i set up a no jive. mine has one completely dead duncan sticker inside (i do this to even out response) and a tiny rubber o-ring from an 888 hubstack (this shims out the gap a hair, and reduces some vibration). it's obviously flipped butterfly, and i often adust the axle to line up the wood's grain. cotton string, always. the great thing about wood yo-yo's, though, is that no two are alike. you should be able to blend with any yo-yo and "allow" (not "make) it to do what you want. i set up every no jive differently.


some incredible people have handled this yo-yo, which is another reason it's important to me. last month, when national yo-yo master steve brown stopped over with his family on the way to a wedding (and suggested we throw a bit with an imperceptible downward flick of the wrist), it was the one he picked off the wall, 'cause it was the most beat (read: 'loved'). world champs like yuuki and tyler have rocked it (both are of no less titanic skill with wood than with metal). brandon jackson, adam brewster, joey fleshman, and red collectively invented "the spirit bomb club" on it last summer. virtually all of the yo-yo friends whom i most admire have played it, and so a little bit of all of them dwells within it, also.

honestly, it's just a yo-yo. it's not even a good one. and yet, to me, it represents the best of all yo-yo's. and after 3+ years of exploring its mystery, i'm no less inspired; no less amazed...

yeah... damn... what in god's name am i going to choose tomorrow?

yo-yo's.

i still have this page?
neat.

so on my wall, i have these three golf ball-display-cases filled with yo-yo's. i don't know why i have so many when i can hardly manage to throw 2 at a time, but regardless... sometimes i purge some of them and feel good. then i acquire more and feel like i should feel bad. mostly all of the ones i have now are significant to me in one way or another... and yet, i feel that i could give them all away tomorrow and be no worse off. it's an interesting paradox. my friend drew, who is much younger and wiser than me, is always talking about how he loves yo-yoing and not yo-yo's. although i definitely agree that only the former 'matters', it's interesting to look at or hold a certain yo-yo and remember a distant time or a specific person with whom it's connected. i've come to a point where i'm not seeking any more unless they should come to me unlooked for by special means.



http://doctorpopular.blogspot.com/2007/05/after-28-days-of-talking-about-it.html
a ways back, another friend-and-yo-yoer, doctor popular, wrote a great series of posts documenting some of his own yo-yo's. i don't want to do the same thing he did, per se, so much as i want an excuse to explore and think about some of my old toys, and reflect on the personal connections i perceive in them.

if you don't like yo-yo's, this blog won't hold anything for you for a while... but then... i've never used it so you have no reason to be reading it anyway. i still haven't counted how many i have or how many i'll be featuring. just one at a time, and not every day, and not in any order.







i think i'll begin with...